Emily Ratajkowski Nails Problems With Female Sexuality In A Personal Essay For ‘Lenny’
"I refuse to live in this world of shame and silent apologies."
At just 24 years old, Emily Ratajkowski already has built an incredibly impressive public profile for herself as a model and actress. She’s started walking in A-list runway shows for designers such as Marc Jacobs and starred in multiple feature films. But, with her roles being limited to Ben Affleck’s one-dimensional mistress in Gone Girl, Zach Efron’s rushed lust interest in We Are Your Friends and a cardboard cutout version of herself in Entourage, this profile is a fairly limited one. For some reason, she’s routinely characterised on the basis of her sexuality.
Oh, that’s right.
After routinely expressing frustration with this — she recently called Robin Thicke’s controversial video for ‘Blurred Lines’ the “bane of [her] existence” and bemoaned the industry’s refusal to give her complex roles — Ratajkowski has today used her experiences as fodder for a powerful essay on the nature of female sexuality for Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter. Titled ‘Baby Woman’, the piece discusses how she felt as a 12-year-old girl with D-cup breasts, and the disorienting objectification and societal judgments she faced as a result of this appearance.
“I was safe in the in-between place of half-baby, half-woman,” she wrote. “The confusion came from outside our small, ivy-covered, wood-floored home in Southern California.” Ratajkowski recounts her first attempts to explore ‘sexiness’ with makeup, lingerie and well-fitting clothes and the rebukes she faced from those around her. A family member “sobbed” to her mother because she was worried for her: “She was worried about the looks I got from men, because I was wearing what I was wearing. I needed to protect myself”. Another older family friend approached her in a similar way saying, “You need to hide out, a girl like you, keep a low profile”.
These are judgements she still feels to this day:
“I see my naked body in the mirrors of all the places I’ve lived, privately dressing, going through my morning routine. I get ready for my day as one of my many roles in life — student, model, actress, friend, girlfriend, daughter, businesswoman. I look at my reflection and meet my own eyes. I hear the voices reminding me not to send the wrong message.
“And what is that message exactly? The implication is that to be sexual is to be trashy because being sexy means playing into men’s desires. To me, ‘sexy’ is a kind of beauty, a kind of self-expression, one that is to be celebrated, one that is wonderfully female. Why does the implication have to be that sex is a thing men get to take from women and women give up? Most adolescent women are introduced to ‘sexy’ women through porn or Photoshopped images of celebrities. Is that the only example of a sexual woman we will provide to the young women of our culture? Where can girls look to see women who find empowerment in deciding when and how to be or feel sexual? Even if being sexualized by society’s gaze is demeaning, there must be a space where women can still be sexual when they choose to be.
“I think of women in their workplaces worrying about how their sexuality might accidentally offend, excite, or create envy. I think of mothers trying to explain to their daughters that while it wasn’t their fault, they should cover up next time. I refuse to live in this world of shame and silent apologies. Life cannot be dictated by the perceptions of others, and I wish the world had made it clear to me that people’s reactions to my sexuality were not my problems, they were theirs.”
This is likely something most women can relate to. Insecurities about ‘sexy’ appearances and behaviour are developed through all sorts of small interactions like this, from a father telling his daughter she can’t go out in what she’s wearing to a leering glance on the street. The logic that women ‘invite’ or ‘provoke’ negative attention from men is the reasoning behind people casting blame on victims of sexual assault and Australian police departments telling women they can’t walk alone in parks.
Ratajkowski’s plea for safe spaces to express and celebrate female sexuality is also particularly similar to the concerns of Australia’s own Caitlin Stasey. Last year Stasey launched Herself: a website which posts self-stylised nude portraits and publishes first-hand accounts on topics such as pornography, masturbation, and polyamory. To coincide with her essay’s release overnight, Ratajkowski coincidentally posted a similar photograph on her Instagram account.
Unfortunately, not everyone’s getting the message.
Surprise! This was a man.
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Read Emily’s full essay here or listen to her talking about more of these issues on Lena Dunham’s podcast Women of the Hour here: